Fear is both a fragmented and a fragmenting emotion. It seems to
take many forms, and each seems to require a different form of acting
out for satisfaction. While this appears to introduce quite variable
behavior, a far more serious effect lies in the fragmented perception
from which the behavior stems. No-one is SEEN COMPLETE.The
body is emphasized, with special emphasis on certain parts, and used
as the standard for comparison for either acceptance or rejection of
suitability for acting out a special form of fear.
SUBSTITUTION AS A DEFENSE
You who believe that God is fear made but one substitution. It has
taken many forms, because it was the substitution of illusion for
truth; of fragmentation for wholeness. It has become so splintered
and subdivided and divided again, over and over, that it is now almost
impossible to perceive it once was one, and still is what it was. That
one error, which brought truth to illusion, infinity to time, and life to
death, was all you ever made. Your whole world rests upon it.
Everything you see reflects it, and every special relationship which
you have ever made is part of it.
You have expressed surprise at hearing how very different is
reality from what you see.You do not realize the magnitude of that
one error. It was so vast and so completely incredible that from it a
world of total unreality HADto emerge.What else COULDcome of
it? Its fragmented aspects are fearful enough, as you begin to look at
them. But nothing you have seen begins to show you the enormity
of the original error, which seemed to cast you out of Heaven, to
shatter knowledge into meaningless bits of disunited perceptions, and
to force you to further substitutions.
That was the first projection of error outward.The world arose
to hide it, and became the screen on which it was projected and
drawn between you and the truth. For truth extends INWARD,
where the idea of loss is meaningless, and only increase is
conceivable. Do you really think it strange that a world in which
everything is backwards and upside-down arose from this? For truth
brought to THIScould only remain within in quiet, and take no part
in all the mad projection by which this world was made. Call it not
sin but madness, for such it was, and so it still remains. Invest it not
18 THE DREAM AND THE REALITY